#sm

You really want to go out to dinner?" Gabriel shot Rase a skeptical look out of the corner of his eye. "As opposed to what?" "Getting on your knees and begging me to beat you." There was no inflection in Gabriel's voice, no heat, and no emotion at all. He wasn't even looking at Rase. ... "I don't want one more than the other," he answered, fully aware that he was being challenged. "They're not interchangeable. I want them both." Rase took a breath to calm the pounding in his chest and continued, even though Gabriel wouldn't look at him. "I want to go out to dinner with you, anywhere you want, on a date. And then I want to go back to your place or my place and I want you to beat me until I bleed. ↗

— Anah Crow

#gay #sadomasochism #skepticism

Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the models. Beware of geeks bearing formulas. ↗

— Warren Buffett

#skepticism

And by the way, my belief is that if men were the ones getting pregnant, abortions would be easier to get than food poisoning in Moscow ↗

— Dennis Miller

#prochoice #food

I don't believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food system have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world eats something else to survive, and that something else, whether running on blood or chlorophyll, would always rather continue to live rather than become sustenance for another. No animal wants to be penned up and milked, or caged and harvested, and you've never seen plants growing in regimented lines of their own accord. ↗

— Brian Awehali

#cruelty #ethics #food #plant-intelligence #veganism

I've seen of enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ↗

— Albert Camus

#love #the-plague #love

A world where it is safe to love is a world where it is safe to live ↗

— Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

#ecosexuality #gaia #new-science #peace #polyamory

But the Beast was a good person...the Prince looked on the outside the way the Beast was on the inside. Sometimes people couldn't see the inside of the person unless they like the outside of a person. Because they hadn't learned to hear the music yet. ↗

— Karen Kingsbury

#love #music #love

It's been so long since I made love I can't even remember who gets tied up. ↗

— Joan Rivers

#love

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal... ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#athiesm #athiest #immortality #mortality #skepticism

Adventure,' then, is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it, which is one thing that Lewis's child characters have learned from reading, 'the right books. ↗

— Laura Miller

#books #lit #reading #skepticism